Friday, August 31, 2012

This is Labor Day weekend, and all across the country,
families and groups of friends will be packing picnics, grilling steaks and
burgers, taking that last trip of the season, and generally giving summer a
celebratory sendoff. We all know that the holiday officially honors American
workers and that officially the first day of fall is still three weeks away. But
in practice, this weekend is all about bidding farewell to summer and looking
forward to fall. Kids are back in school, the college football season begins,
and even here in the sultry South, temperatures have dropped a bit. I know I
won’t be wearing sweaters for another six weeks or so, but I’m already in a
fall frame of mind. Among other things, this means that I’m thinking about the
books that will be appearing in bookstores, online and brick and mortar, between
now and the end of the year.

My TBR list for the final third of the year has been steadily
growing since last December. I’m including only the romance/women’s fiction
books for this post. There are others such as J. K. Rowling’s Casual Vacancy
and Jasper Fforde’s Woman Who Died a Lot that I’ll definitely be reading. No
doubt I’ll add even more books as friends recommend titles or as I become aware
of a new release I missed in my search.

This is not a comprehensive list by any means. Heroes and
Heartbreakers has already posted comprehensive lists of September releases and
will be posting other monthly lists well ahead of release dates. The Romance
Dish and All About Romance will post their lists at the beginning of each
month. This is strictly my list of the September-December 2012 books I plan to
read. Although I doubt that I’ll read all three of the December 31 releases on
New Year’s Eve, I expect to read most of these before this year ends. Thanks to
ARCs from publishers, authors, and friends, I have a head start. I’ve already
read the titles in bold, and they have been such good reading that I have high
expectations for the rest.(The number in parenthesis after the author's name is the day of the month that the book will be released.)

Sea Glass Summer by Dorothy Cannell, a book that sounds like
a romance/women’s fiction hybrid from an author whose mysteries I love (and she
hasn’t given her readers a new book in more than three years).

The Lady Most Willing, the second collaborative novel from Connie
Brockway, Eloisa James, and Julia Quinn.

Monday, August 27, 2012

I don’t read a lot
of debut authors. Their absence from my annual list of books read has nothing
to do with prejudice against beginning authors and everything to do with the number
of authors who are autobuys for me and the limited number of books I am able to
read. The debut authors I do read tend to be friends or friends of friends. Less
frequently, I will read a debut author who comes highly recommended by someone
whose opinion about books I respect. Most
of these books are romance fiction. Recently I read a rare debut book that
falls in none of these categories. It is a Southern novel that seduced me with
its cover copy, and it gets two thumbs up from me and a notation in my reading
journal to keep an eye out for the next book from this author.

Thirty-year-old Roslyn
Byrne is facing a season of loss. First, a short-term affair with a man who “wasn’t
a bad man, but . . . was a plain bad choice” ends with his going home to his
wife. A short time later, Roslyn suffers injuries in an automobile accident
that end her career with the Atlanta Ballet Company. While she is in the
hospital recovering, her maternal grandmother, an influential figure in her
childhood, dies. Several months later, she loses a baby and her sane, cynical
hold on reality. Her mother, fearful that Roslyn will retreat to the Byrne home
place in Glenmary, Tennessee, persuades her to travel to Manny’s Island, an
isolated spot in the marshlands off the eastern coast of St. Simon’s, one of
Georgia’s Golden Isles. Broken and scarred in body and spirit, Roslyn will find
in this mystical, unfamiliar place the healing she needs to integrate all the
parts of who she is and become healthy and whole.

The house Roslyn
rents and the twelve acres on which it stands belong to Urey Trezevant. Over
the months Roslyn spends on the island, she forms connections with the
mysterious Urey and his young daughter Damascus, named for the river that
borders their property. Like Roslyn, they are people who have known a loss so
grievous that they remain among the walking wounded. Urey’s sister, Ivy
Trezevant Cain, who is hungry for a life larger than the one she has on the
island, becomes Roslyn’s friend, as does her teenage son, a charmer known as
JB. Ivy’s husband, Will, provides a way for Roslyn to share a part of her Byrne
legacy. Each of them, along with Nonnie, the old conjure woman who has a vision
concerning Roslyn purpose on Manny’s Island, and Otis, the stubborn old farmer
who knows checkers and pumpkin husbandry, has something to teach Roslyn.

From Roslyn and
Damascus, the point of view characters, to the minor characters, even those who
people the book only as memories, Brock creates a cast of crazy-quilt
personalities of shifting colors, contradictory impulses, and secrets hidden
sometimes even from those who possess them. They challenge the mind and touch
the heart. I found Damascus, part lost child and part old soul, particularly
appealing. She reminded me of other girl children in cherished Southern novels,
characters like Carson McCullers’s Frankie and Harper Lee’s Scout.

Brock proves in this
lovely, lyrical novel filled with music, natural and perhaps supernatural, that
the conventions of southern literature can still be used with grace, power, and
freshness by a twenty-first century Southern writer. The past is a vital force
that impinges on the present, place as presented in the present of Manny’s
Island and the mythic time of Glenmary is as rich and vibrant a presence as any
character, family ties that can sustain and imprison—these qualities and more
place Brock in the tradition of Southern literature. Hers is an exceptional
debut. The River Witch is a beautiful book, haunting and unforgettable. I rank
it with the best of contemporary Southern fiction.

I reiterate for my
friends who read only romance fiction, be advised that this is not a romance. I
highly recommend The River Witch, but it does not have a conventional HEA,
although the ending is neither depressing nor confusing.

What’s the last book
by a debut author that made you want to share its wonder with all your reading
friends?

Friday, August 24, 2012

One night shortly after Lady Charlotte Wylder, the
eldest daughter of the late Earl of Hervey and his countess, rescues her
youngest sister’s cat from a tree, she learns that she has been betrothed since
she was in her cradle to James Augustus FitzCharles, the third Duke of
Marchbourne. Sometime later Charlotte and her duke meet face to face when she
has again climbed a tree, this time on the duke’s estate, to rescue Fig the
cat. The two quite literally fall for one another as they tumble from the tree.
Tree climbing will continue to figure prominently in this story.

Charlotte is a free-spirited innocent, and her duke
is a bit on the stuffy side, very concerned about appearances and about the scandalous
connection that made him a duke with royal blood in his veins, the
great-grandson of a king. Some conflict based on their very different natures
is inevitable, and March’s fear that their lusty coupling is inappropriate for
his lady duchess leaves Charlotte to wonder what happened to her merry groom
and the lovemaking she thoroughly enjoyed. There’s also a villain who creates a
spot of bother, but this is fundamentally a light-hearted book. All problems
are resolved with a certain humor, and even the villain’s just deserts, while
no doubt painful to him, don’t deprive him of life or limb.

Charlotte and March are endearing characters. I
thought they were wonderfully paired, and I believed in their HEA. They both change in the course of the story,
something that I’ve learned not to count as a given. Charlotte gains maturity
and the confidence to refuse to let Charlotte the person be submerged in Her
Grace, the duchess. For his part, March has to let go of his obsession with
propriety and appearances. His attitude is more understandable as more of his
past is revealed, but he must learn to trust not only Charlotte and her love
for him but also his own integrity.

When You Wish Upon a Duke is a book that will make
readers smile, but it is lifted above the status of a merely amusing book by
the detailed look it offers of the domestic life of a duke and duchess in
Georgian England. From descriptions of Charlotte’s quarters in the ducal
mansion to the clothes she wears and the food served to the ducal couple, the
setting is vibrantly rendered. I especially liked the scene where the duke asks
Charlotte to call him March, the name his intimates use, and she agrees to do
so if he addresses her by her first name. Both customary behavior and the way
this relationship will depart from the customary are revealed in this brief
exchange.

I found it refreshing that although there is an
arranged marriage, March and Charlotte are eager to fall in love with one
another and committed to one another’s happiness. It was also pleasant to
encounter a hero who was neither a rake nor a recluse brooding over nameless
wrongs. The focus of the novel is unswervingly on the hero and heroine, but
readers see enough of Charlotte’s sisters, especially the youngest, to trust
they will prove interesting heroines in their turn. I must admit the one scene
that disturbed me was Charlotte’s parting from her family. Their disappearance
from the story was convenient for the narrative, but the manner seemed
heartless. March has a cousin whom I found interesting and
would like to see more of. I have a suspicion about him, and I will be
interested in seeing if I’m correct. If
I’m wrong, I’ll just have to imagine I’m right.

Lest you think that Isabella Bradford is a debut author, I hasten to include the information that it is a pseudonym for Susan Holloway Scott, who has written five excellent historical novels under her own name and more than thirty historical romances as Miranda Jarrett. Having enjoyed books written under both those identities, I expected to enjoy this one. My expectations were met.

The second book in the series, When
the Duchess Says Yes will be released September 25 with the final book in the trilogy, When
the Duke Found Love, to follow on November 27. I look forward to both of them, but I’m
also hoping for more historical fiction from Susan Holloway Scott. And the
covers of books two and three are even more gorgeous than the cover of WYWUAD.

There seems to be an epidemic of authors writing
under several names. Do you find it confusing? Do you always know if you’re
reading a true debut author or meeting one you’ve read before in a new guise?

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

First, Jesse Winsloe lost a job she had held and loved for
eight years, earth sciences teacher at Tulsa’s Lake Grove Middle School. Then,
she lost her fiancé, principal of that school, who now expects Jesse to have
lunch with him and his new wife to “clear the air.”It’s hardly surprising that the invitation
pushes Jesse to go along with her mother and stepfather’s suggestion that she
leave Tulsa and pay a visit to Aunt Will, her nearest paternal relative, who
lives in the Ozark community of Marrying Stone, Arkansas, where Jesse’s father
had grown up.

Aunt Will is Marrying Stone’s “granny woman,” valued for as much
for her practical wisdom as for her knowledge of the healing properties of herbs,
midwifery, and other folk remedies. She has retired from this role, sold her
home, and moved to Onery Cabin, built by her great-grandfather, an isolated log
cabin on a mountainside farm, accessible by automobile only with a four-wheel
drive vehicle. Despite her retirement,
people still approach her for “cures,” but Jesse doesn’t have to ask. Aunt Will,
who “knows a lot about mending broken hearts,” volunteers a “plain and simple” cure
for Jesse’s “lovelorn solitaries,” six nights of applying a foul-smelling
poultice during the phase of the waning moon.

Erwin Frederick “Piney” Baxley, Jr. is a physician’s
assistant who returned to Marrying Stone after he was licensed and set up a
community clinic in the first floor of his home. Except for one day a week when
a doctor holds office hours in the clinic, Piney provides the medical care for
Marrying Stone. He is the single father of a seventeen-year-old basketball
star. Piney loves his community and his son is the center of his life, but he’s
wary of a relationship with a local woman since he’s a two-time loser at love
with his former wife. Jesse reminds him that he is more than his job, more than
the father of a teenager. They like one another, and a short-term friendship
with benefits may be just what both Piney and Jesse need—or they may discover
they need much more.

Readers familiar with Marrying
Stone and Simple Jess, two of Morsi’s
Americana romances from the 90s, will recognize the setting, although The Lovesick Cure is contemporary. In
fact, the heroine’s gets her Ozark nickname “DuJess” from the old timers in
Marrying Stone who still remembered Jesse Best when Jesse Winsloe was born and
thus called her “Deux Jesse.” Morsi does
a superb job in the new book with presenting Marry Stone in the 21st
century, a place that has retained the uniqueness of a traditional mountain
community but with touches such as Wi-Fi at the clinic, cell phones, Camryn’s Goth
look, and Dr. Mo (Dr. Mohammed El Azziz) as reminders that even so isolated a
place as Marrying Stone, Arkansas, has changed with the passing years.

Aunt Will’s story, its past and its present, is interwoven
with the story of Jesse and Piney and, to a lesser degree, of Tree and Camryn.
All of the characters have the genuineness and likeability that are typical of
characters created by Morsi.I always
end a Morsi book with the warm feeling that her characters have earned a place
in my heart and in my memory.

There is a certain
humor in Aunt Will’s cure for lovesickness. An empathetic reader will likely laugh and cringe at the help Aunt Will gives
Jesse in removing the hardened poultice. And I think Piney’s informing Jess
that the stench the cure left behind is unmistakable may be the first time I’ve
seen an H/H relationship begin with the hero telling the heroine she literally stinks.
But Jesse’s time with Aunt Will does effect a cure. When she first arrives,
Jesse is filled with a mix of emotions, none of them good: “Jesse was bereft
and embarrassed and confused. She was hurt and angry. And she hated the pity
she saw in people’s eyes.” After a few weeks, she begins to realize that
something was missing in her relationship with her former fiancé: “Their
relationship had two speeds: ‘just friends’ or ‘in bed.’ And they had always
done better with the former than the latter.” Piney completes her education in
exactly what was missing.

Tree and Camryn’s story is real enough to make
a reader with teenage children turn pale, and it’s also a bit of a gender twist
since it’s the girl who is pushing for them to become fully sexually active. I
found it easy to sympathize with Camryn’s fears that Tree will leave her behind
and Tree’s determination to resist repeating his father’s mistakes. Tree’s
relationship with Piney is another significant thread in this intricately woven
narrative. Piney’s description of a parent’s responsibilities will strike home
with many readers.

A father had to think about everything, consider everything.
Piney understood that he had to view the “big picture” of his son. It was not
enough to revel in his athletic achievements. Tree had to develop his intellect
and his character, as well. He was going to go out in the world, and it was his
father’s responsibility to see that he knew how to handle money, how to wash
his laundry, how to change the oil in the car, and how to write a thank-you
note in longhand. Tree needed to be helpful, kind and responsible. He also must
be hardworking, determined, and principled. Coach Poule was free to enjoy Tree
as a high school hero, a star athlete. It was Piney’s job to make sure those
accolades were not going to be the sum total definition of his son.

With such a father, it’s no wonder Tree thinks of Piney as he
does. “You don’t want me to end up like you. I have to tell you, that’s
always been kind of weird to me. I hope I end up like you. In
fact, that’s the one goal that I’m really sure about. I want to be as much like
you as possible.” And their
relationship has enough problems to keep things real. There’s believability,
humor, and a bit of role reversal when Tree discovers the truth of his father’s
relationship with Jesse.

Aunt Will is the richest character and the pivotal one. All the
other characters are connected to her. She has the credible humanness of the
other characters, but she is also an almost mythic figure in her wisdom and in
the mystical power some believe her to possess. Her utterances at times have an
epigrammatic quality.

“It’s a point
of wisdom to know that life is always going to feel like an uphill grade, even
now when you’re on the downhill slope.”…… “It’s best to live in the here and
now. . . .”

“And wring all the happiness you can find out
of what you have.”

When the doctor,
concerned about Aunt Will’s health, urges her to treat her body like spun
glass, she laughs and tells him she’s never been spun glass. “I’m more the
galvanized wash bucket kind of gal,” she says. I’d say she’s pure gold, and the
best part of Pamela Morsi’s new book.

Morsi writes quiet
books, and their sensuality level is mild. If you limit your romance reading to
high adventure and scorching heat, The Lovesick Cure is not for you. But
if you like your characters warm and real with a convincing mix of flaws,
foibles, and genuine goodness and your fictional worlds similar to something
you might find around a few twists in the road or halfway up a mountain, you
will enjoy this book. It’s not the best Morsi has written. It lacks the
catch-in-the-throat, punch-in-the-heart quality of some of her most highly
praised books, but it is a very good book and one I definitely recommend.

I admit to an
abiding affection for quiet books. How do you feel about them? Do you prefer
books in which big things happen at dependable intervals?

Friday, August 17, 2012

When Barbara Buncle’s dependable dividends suddenly become less dependable
in the early 1930s, she needs to add to her income. She rejects keeping hens because
they are “such fluttery things,” and she rejects paying guests because Dorcas,
her cook/maid/parlor maid/friend who used to be her nurse, didn’t like the
idea. The only thing left for a diffident, middle-aged spinster to do is to
write a book--and she does. Since she believes she can write only what she
knows, she writes about Silverstream, the small English village where she has
lived for all of her life, and its inhabitants. She sends Chronicles of an English Village to Abbott & Spicer because
they are first in an alphabetical list of publishers.

Arthur Abbott, like all publishers, is in search of a bestseller. He doesn’t
have much hope that he’s found one when his nephew Sam, newly employed by the
firm, gives him a manuscript with the pedestrian title Chronicles of an English Village written by John Smith. But Sam’s
insistence that “the feller who wrote this book is either a genius or an imbecile”
persuades him to read it. He reads it twice. He concludes that Sam was wrong.

It was not written by a genius, of
course, neither was it the babblings of an imbecile; but the author of it was
either a very clever man writing with his tongue in his cheek, or else a very
simple person writing in all good faith.

Either way Abbott decides he may have his bestseller, and he sends a request
that John Smith pay a visit to the office of Abbott & Spicer to discuss
their buying his book. He’s rather charmed when “John Smith” turns out to be
the naïve, devastatingly honest Miss Barbara Buncle whose blue eyes and good
teeth are all she has to rate her as physically attractive for a woman of her
years.

Abbott &Spicer publish the book with a change in title. Chronicles of an
English Village becomes Disturber of the Peace, and Disturber of the Peace
becomes a bestseller. Those hens Miss Buncle decided not to keep could scarcely
have had more ruffled feathers than the villagers of Silverstream when they
discover themselves in the book. There are threats of legal action, demands
that the book be pulled from bookstores, and plans to horsewhip John Smith when
his identity is revealed. No one suspects that the reviled author is the self-effacing
Barbara Buncle who is busily taking notes for a sequel, but both Miss Buncle
and Mr. Abbott realize that if the villagers don’t find out who John Smith is
before the sequel is published, they will certainly have their answer then.

The first romances written for adults I ever read were my mother’s books,
all of them written before the romance revolution of the 1970s. I loved those “gentle
romances” and devoured all that my mother owned and all I could find on the
shelves of the local library. The novels of D. E. Stevenson were among my
favorites. They were written decades before I read them as a preteen, but they
had a warmth and a charm that kept me searching for more of them. I was
delighted when I saw that Sourcebooks Landmark was reissuing Miss Buncle’s Book, originally published
in 1934. Rereading it, I easily understood why Stevenson’s books sold three
million copies in the United States.

Barbara Buncle is not the typical romance heroine. She’s older, she’s dowdy,
and she’s about as far removed from a “kick-ass heroine” as one can imagine.
She provokes laughter, but it’s affectionate laughter, and she moves the reader
to sympathy as well. Her problems are real. When Mr. Abbott gives her a hundred
pounds as an advance, she signs the receipt with tears in her eyes.

It really was rather astonishing (when
you come to think of it) what that tiny piece of paper represented—far more
than a hundred sovereigns (although in modern finance less). It represented
food and drink to Barbara Buncle, and, perhaps, a new winter coat and hat; but
above all, freedom from that nightmare of worry, and sleep, and a quiet mind.

I loved the description of her reaction to the reviews of her book, and
seeing the HEA of a character who never even dreamed of one was immensely
satisfying.

The cast of secondary characters is large, quirky and memorable. There are
some a reader will dislike intensely because she recognizes them, although they
may dress differently and speak with a different accent: the domineering,
hypocritical Mrs. Featherstone-Hogg; the controlling emotionally abusive Mr.
Bulmer; and the cunning, gold digging Vivien Greensleeves. But they are
balanced by the hard-working Dr. Walker, still wildly in live with his pretty,
intelligent wife; the good-hearted, if misguided, vicar, Ernest Hathaway; and
the lively, impulsive Sally Carter. And Stevenson gives her readers three
romances—four, if we count the good doctor’s love for his beloved Sarah.

I highly recommend this for readers of sweet romances. But I also recommend
it for those who would like a change of pace, are looking for something light
and amusing, or find appealing the promise of a book that has the charm of
vintage photographs and the comfort of a hug.I hope that Sourcebook follows up with Miss Buncle Married (1936) and The
Two Mrs. Abbots (1943), but I can’t wait. I put them on hold at my library.

Sourcebooks also reissued Georgette Heyer’s romances and mysteries, the
electronic editions of which are on sale for $2.99 each through August 20 in celebration
of Heyer’s birthday. I love the idea of making vintage romances available to
modern readers. Are there older romances you’d like to see reissued? What do
you think makes the difference between enduring appeal and hopelessly dated?

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Lady
Marcia Sherwood, oldest daughter of the Marchioness of Brady, was just shy of
sixteen and still a schoolgirl when she met the Lattimore brothers, a meeting
that shaped her life in unexpected ways. They were her escorts to Dublin where
she planned to join her family to attend a wedding. Duncan, Earl Chadwick, is
older, more reserved, more serious, and totally lacking in the charm possessed
in abundance by his younger brother. Marcia
falls in love with the golden-haired, golden-tongued Finn, and on her sixteenth
birthday, certain that Finn is the love of her life and that they will soon be
married, they become lovers. The following morning a note from Finn informs her
that his brother is sending him to America in order to keep Finn and Marcia
apart.

Heartbroken,
Marcia picks up the threads of her life, never confiding in anyone. But
convinced that she can never marry since she is not the innocent, virginal
Brady daughter everyone thinks she is, when time comes to leave Oak Hall, her
school in Surrey, she refuses to make her debut into society. Instead, she
returns to Oak Hall as a teacher. Four years later, she has become
headmistress, devoted to the school and to her students, firm in her belief
that serving as headmistress is her mission in life. She is in London on
business for the school when she meets Duncan, who stirs unwelcome memories. On
the same day, her schoolgirl nemesis and now owner of Oak Hall, dismisses
Marcia from the position of headmistress, effective immediately. Her life is
changing again.

Duncan
has spent the four years since his brother’s departure for Virginia dealing
with estate problems and rearing Joe, the illegitimate son Finn left behind.
Unable to surrender the infant to foster parents, Duncan has brought Joe up as
his own son. He is unconcerned about those who frown upon him for recognizing a
bastard son, but he does worry about how Joe may be affected. He decides that
it’s time he takes a wife, and he’s intrigued by the woman Lady Marcia Sherwood
has become. Responsibility is added to attraction when Finn shows up in London
unannounced and confesses his seduction of Marcia to Duncan. He decides that
the only way to make up for Finn’s offense is to marry Marcia himself. But
although Marcia finds herself reluctantly interested in Duncan, she finds Finn
as charming as ever—at least until she finds that he lied to her about Duncan’s
forcing him to go to Virginia. However intoxicating she finds Duncan’s kisses,
they are not enough to make her forsake her hopes of returning to Oak Hall as
headmistress.

Loving
Lady Marcia is the first book in Kieran Kramer’s House of Brady series. Yes,
there is humor in Kramer’s nod to the iconic TV series. Marcia and her sisters
Janice and Cynthia all have golden hair, and their mother was a widow when she
married the Marquess of Brady, who is the father of three sons. Their names?
You guessed it—Gregory, Peter, and Robert. The blended family is loving and
funny, even though their well-being is overseen by Burbank the butler rather
than Alice. I felt as if I were sharing a giggle with Kramer at several points,
but the topical humor never distracted me from the historical characters whose
story I found fully engaging.

Lady Marcia
is a complex mix of strength and vulnerability, warmth and intelligence. I
thought she was more likeable and more interesting than the TV character.
Duncan is a dream of a hero. A man of honor with a heavy sense of
responsibility and a great heart, he takes care of everyone, even his charming
but conscienceless brother. How can a reader resist a hero who possesses all
these qualities plus good looks, incredible kissing skills, musical talent, and
a habit of reading aloud to his staff? I definitely found him irresistible, and
his young son is just as adept at stealing hearts.

If you
liked Kramer’s earlier books or if you enjoy your romance mixed with clever
humor, I think you will be as delighted with this book as I was. I’m hoping to
catch glimpses of Marcia, Duncan, and Joe enjoying their HEA as the stories of
the other five members of this Brady Bunch unfold in subsequent books.

I confess I found the premise of a historical Brady Bunch greatly appealing.
What about you? Are there other TV shows from the late 20th and
early 21st centuries that you’ve seen rewritten as historical
romance? Can you think of others that hold possibilities?

Friday, August 10, 2012

Debbie Macomber makes her debut with a
new publisher and returns her readers to familiar territory in the first book
of a new series.

Just after New Year’s Day, Jo Marie Rose
bought a bed-and-breakfast in Cedar Cove. Still grieving for her husband Paul
Rose, a soldier killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan in late April of
the previous year, she has come to Cedar Cove against the wishes of her family,
who want her to stay in Seattle. She and Paul had all too brief a time
together, but she believes that she will never love again with the joy and
intensity they knew. However, the inn gives her a sense of peace that persuades
her Cedar Cove is where she needs to start to build a new life. Since she buys
the inn in turnkey condition from a couple who restored the 19th-century
home, she is open for business almost immediately. The only significant change
she makes is to rename the inn in her husband’s memory.

Her first guests have returned to Cedar
Cove reluctantly. Joshua Weaver left twelve years ago when he joined the army shortly
after he graduated from high school. His relationship with his stepfather was
never cordial, and it grew worse after his mother’s death. When his stepfather
accused Josh of stealing from him and kicked him out of the house shortly
before graduation, their estrangement was complete. Josh came back just long
enough to attend his stepbrother’s funeral five years ago, not even staying
overnight. Now the project manager for a construction company, he is in Cedar
Cove only because Michelle Nelson, a neighbor and social worker, has contacted
him with the news that his stepfather is terminally ill and needs help. It is
only a sense of duty that brings Josh home, and he is eager to take care of
business and leave as soon as possible.

It is also duty that brings Abby Kinkaid
to Cedar Cove. Her older brother is getting married, and his bride is from
Cedar Cove. The family, who moved from Cedar Cove a decade earlier, is gathering
for the wedding, and Abby knows she has to join them. She has always believed
that it was the accident that changed her life irrevocably that forced her
parents to move to Arizona. Abby grew up in Cedar Cove, a happy, outgoing girl
who shared all the typical activities with her best friend, Angela White. But
during Christmas vacation when the two were college freshmen, they were
involved in an automobile accident. Angela was killed. Abby was driving, and
she felt guilty for her friend’s death, a feeling exacerbated by Angela’s
family’s anger and bitterness toward her. Abby believes the whole town holds
her responsible for the accident, and so she cut off all contact with friends
in Cedar Cove. The guilt she carries has shaped her life, turning her into a
very different person from the joyful girl she once was. Even now, ten years
after the fact, she refuses to stay at the hotel where the other wedding guests
are. Her only idea is get through the wedding, drawing as little attention to
herself as possible, and then return as quickly as she can to her home in
Florida, about as far from Cedar Cove, Washington, as one can get.

The themes that link the stories of Josh
and Abby are obvious. They are both in need to forgive and to heal in order to
move beyond their pasts. In Abby’s case, it is self-forgiveness, but that can
be the most difficult of all. They both find far more than they expected in
Cedar Cove. The strength and warmth Josh finds in Michelle helps him to forgive
his stepfather and begin a new life with Michelle. Abby finds friends who
celebrate her return, eventual absolution from Angela’s family, and
reconnection with a man from her past. The inn at Rose Harbor promises to be a
place of healing and new beginnings not only for Jo Marie but also for all who visit.

Fans who have loved Macomber’s Cedar Cove
books will be happy to see that the new series has all the warmth and sense of
community that made the original Cedar Cove series so beloved. Old friends such
as Grace Harding, Olivia Griffin, and Peggy Belden make brief appearances. I
suspect others will show up in subsequent books. If this first book sets the
pattern, this series will be the same hybrid of women’s fiction and romance
that characterized the other Cedar Cove books. There is even a curmudgeonly,
ex-military handyman, Mark Taylor, who promises to add interest and perhaps
unanticipated romance to Jo Marie’s new life. Nobody is better than Debbie Macomber
at writing books that show hope and love triumphant over the staggering blows
life throws at people. There is little new about this new series other than the
publisher, but Macomber’s sales suggest more of the same is exactly what her
fans want.

Are you a Debbie Macomber fan? What do
you think accounts for her huge popularity?

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Angela Bartlett and Billie Young have been friends since
they were young girls at boarding school. The effervescent Billie and the
contained Angie are very different personalities, but they balance one another,
and they are true sister-friends. Of course, Angie is there to celebrate Billie’s
thirty-second birthdaywith her, her
husband Michael, their children—five-year-old Eva and baby Charlie—and assorted
friends and neighbors. But the unthinkable happens: Billie, vital and vibrant
at the beginning of the celebration, is dead of an undiagnosed heart problem
before the evening’s end.

Ten months later Angie returns from a trip to New York where
she’s been training with an American jewelry designer and finds a gaunt Michael merely
going through the motions of living, surrounded by clutter and dust and two
children whom he loves desperately but with whom he’s hardly connecting. It’s
another blow to Angie’s heart to see what has happened to Billie’s family.
Determined to help in any way she can, she offers practical help with the house
and the children, but she offers tough love as well, telling Michael that he
has become a zombie living in a cave and suggesting that he change his plan to
take a year off and return to his work and to life.

Michael, at first angry about Angie’s comments, is forced to
reconsider when his daughter reminds him of broken promises to her. Michael
recognizes that he owes it to his children to move out of the shadows into the
light. He apologizes to Angie and accepts her advice about work. Over the next
months, Angie spends a great deal of time with Michael and the children,
picking Eva up after school, sharing meals, and developing a real friendship
with Michael as an individual and not just as her friend’s husband.

As the friendship between Angie and Michael deepens, an
awareness of one another shifts to desire. For both of them, the desire is
mixed with guilt. Angie still thinks of Michael as belonging to Billie, and
Michael still thinks of himself as married to Billie. They can’t build a future
together until each of them can come to terms with what once was and accept
with joy what can be.

I’ve been a Sarah Mayberry fan since I read Home for the Holidays and loved it back
in 2009. I glommed her backlist and have eagerly awaited subsequent books, all
of which I’ve enjoyed.But I think Within Reach is the best she’s written. Mayberry’s
characters always seem real; they behave like adults who know what it is to
hurt, to dream, to grow. And Mayberry has the knack for giving her readers
romances with plenty of sizzle without making the characters appear to have the
libidos of adolescent males. But Within
Reach goes beyond her usual excellent romance to present a powerful and
moving look at grief and recovery.

Because the reader meets and likes Billie Young in the
prologue and sees her interacting with her best friend as well as her husband
and children, the empathy evoked for both Angie and Michael has a dimension it
would lack had Billie been merely a name. The unrequited love for a best friend’s
spouse or lover that blossoms into mutual love after the death of the friend is
standard fare in romance fiction, and it has been handled skillfully by some
authors, disastrously by others. But what Mayberry does is different, and I
think more difficult. Before Billie’s death, Angie and Michael’s relationship
is solely through Billie. They like one another, but they define one another in
terms of Billie. Angie sees Michael as Billie’s husband; Michael sees Angie as
Billie’s best friend.This removes any
sleaze factor from what happens later, and it allows Mayberry to show their
relationship develop gradually with the emotional connection strengthening as
the sexual tension increases.

The intimacy between them grows naturally from the time they
spend together, their mutual commitment to Eva and Charlie, the honest conversations
they have, and their concern about each other’s well being. And Mayberry never oversimplifies
the process. The relationship, emotional and physical, is a series of advances
and retreats, and both Angie and Michael struggle with feelings of guilt and
disloyalty each step of the way.

Angie’s relationship with Eva and Charlie is separate from
her feelings about Michael. She is a beloved figure in their lives before
Billie’s death, and her love and concern for them never diminishes. Even when
she thinks she and Michael can have no future, she knows that somehow that she
will continue to be a part of the lives of these children. They are paramount
for Michael. It is his realization of what his hopelessness is doing to them
that pushes him to take the first moves beyond grief. Mayberry also makes
readers see the children as individuals. Eva is smart and funny and very much
her mother’s daughter in her joy in life. Even young Charlie has a definite
personality.

Finally, Mayberry never diminishes the love both Angie and
Michael have for Billie.Each
understands the loss the other suffered.When Angie sees Michael upon her return from New York, she thinks, “He’d
loved Billie so much. She’d been the center of his world and she’d died far,
far too young. Was it any wonder that he was finding it so hard to pull himself
together and move on?”

Even when Michael is angered by what Angie says to him about
moving out of his cave, he recognizes what she shared with Billie: “She and
Billie had been more like sisters than friends. They had finished each other’s
sentences, said the honest thing when it needed to be said and been each other’s
best cheerleaders.” The love they had for Billie will go on. It is part of
them, and the love they share is neither greater nor lesser than the one
Michael shared with Billie. It is equal—and different because grief has made
these two people different from the persons they once were.

I would like to have seen another chapter, or perhaps an epilogue. I
came to care about these characters so much that I wanted to see more of the
HEA. I applaud their recognition that the life ahead of them will doubtless
hold problems, but I longed to bask in their happiness see a bit of their
future with the children. But maybe that’s the sign of a great read—the reader
just doesn’t want to let go of the characters.

It’s probably redundant to add this, but I highly recommend Within Reach. I’ve added it to my best
of 2012 list.

What’s the last book you read that left you reluctant to say
goodbye to the characters? Do you think this reluctance explains the popularity
of series?

I loved this book so much that I want to share it. I’ll give
a copy to one randomly selected commenter (from among U. S readers).

Friday, August 3, 2012

Grace Brooks wasn’t looking for a job as a dog walker, but
when a misdialed call leads to an offer of the job, she needs the money badly
enough to take it. She can only hope her high-achieving super scientists
parents never find out that their adopted daughter is reduced to such work. She
hasn’t told them that her promising career as a CPA for a banking firm in
Seattle came to an abrupt end when she rejected the horizontal position her
boss saw as part of the job. Lucky Harbor was exactly one gas tank away from
Seattle, but Grace has found friends and a sense of belonging in the small
town. She hasn’t found a steady job however, and unlike her friends Mallory
Quinn (Lucky in Love) and Amy Michaels (At Last), her social life is sadly
lacking as well. What she doesn’t know is that the phone call about a dog
walking job she never sought is going to change everything.

Josh Scott hates chaos, but that’s what his life has become.
Five years earlier, his parents were
killed in an automobile accident that left Josh, already the single father of
an infant son, responsible for his sixteen-year-old sister Anna, who was left a
paraplegic by the same accident, and for his father’s medical practice. Things
haven’t become any easier. Josh works two shifts each week in Lucky Harbor ER
and volunteers once a week at a local clinic while keeping the practice he
still thinks of as his father’s going, parenting a five-year-old who has been
in a barking stage since Anna introduced a pug puppy into the mix, and riding
herd on Anna who is in full-throttle rebellion against her limited, boring
life. When his baby sitter bails on him, he really is desperate. He needs help,
and Grace needs a temporary job.

Grace is still looking for a job beyond Luck Harbor, one
more in keeping with parental expectations. Josh is still determined to avoid a
relationship that would mean one more person depending on him. But the
chemistry between them proves stronger than their resolutions, and their hearts
recognize they are meant to be together long before their heads concede the
victory to love.

Forever and a Day is the sixth novel in the Luck Harbor
series, the third in the Chocoholics trilogy. It’s my favorite of the series.
Grace and Josh are a delight together. Their relationship between them grows in
a credible manner with an appealing blend of humor, sexy scenes, and genuine
communication. Grace allows herself to become the free spirit she was meant to
be, and she balances Josh’s sense of responsibility that weighs too heavily
upon him at times. Toby and Anna play important roles. Josh’s love for son is
shown in heartwarming scenes, and his relationship with Anna has the
complications that one might realistically expect given their particular
circumstances. I especially liked seeing Grace’s relationships with Toby and
Anna develop naturally rather than seeming to be mere extensions of her
relationship with Josh.

Fans of the series will enjoy seeing Mallory and Amy enjoying
their HEAs, but the book can be appreciated as a standalone. I’m a fan of
small-town contemporary romances, and Shalvis has created one of the strongest
series in the subgenre with her Lucky Harbor books. There is the strong sense
of community that is the heart of such books, but the focus is on the romance
between Grace and Josh. If you’re a fan of Shalvis, I predict this book will
become one of your favorites. If you’ve never read Shalvis, I highly recommend beginning
with this one. It’s a definite winner.

The trend for small-town contemporary romances shows no
signs of slowing down. Do you like this subgenre? Which series is your
favorite?

"Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die." — Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

FTC DISCLAIMER

Just Janga is not primarily a review site, but I will sometimes review books that I have read and enjoyed. I purchase many of the books I review, but I sometimes receive free copies (print or electronic) of books I review from authors or publishers (often via NetGalley). For purposes of FTC disclosure, visitors to this site should assume that review books have been provided at no cost to the reviewer.